Chapter Text
Raylan was appointed the Eastern District of Kentucky’s representative at the 12th Annual National Law Enforcement Joint Conference in Nashville, Tennessee as a punishment. When he inquired as to what he was being punished for, Art informed him that he had, over the years, committed any number of crimes against common sense. Raylan countered that “over the years” was an unforgivably loose timeline for them to be operating under as officers of the law, and Art further informed him that there was no statute of limitations of crimes against common sense, and that he should put his shabby second suit jacket in his shabby garment bag, if he even owned one, and get it and himself in the damn car.
This was how Raylan lost all of Saturday and Sunday as well as Friday afternoon to the ravages of mandatory symposia. Also, Rachel, who had secretly wanted to go to the conference due to having this disease where she thought it was important to know more people than you already did, was mad at him.
Still, punishment conferences aren’t without their perks, Raylan reflects, stretching out under the stiff white sheets native to the mid-tier Holiday Inn Express-type knockoffs that are, in turn, the unnatural habitat of mid-tier loser government functionaries like himself. Sometimes, the perks have big blue eyes and cheekbones that could slice your fingertip open, even if they spend the night de-crisping the sheets with what Raylan can only assume is nightmare sweat. Will sleeps lying flat on his back like a corpse, which Raylan had forgotten since the last time he leaned up against the bar of whatever mid-verging-on-high-tier hotel law enforcement conferences are actually held in, turned the drawl up to eleven, and said “hey.”
The room phone rings, and Will goes from flat to upright almost faster than Raylan can track, gasping like someone was trying to drown him. Raylan frowns at him as he fumbles for the phone, mutters “Will,” into the receiver, then, “What? Okay. Okay. Say it again? Okay. Sure. Jack—” and then, very sarcastically, “Like the tethered goat being led up the mountain. Yes, same to you. Bye.”
“Good morning,” Raylan says, as Will angrily but gently returns the receiver to its cradle. Raylan rolls over onto his back, propping his head on his hands in a comfortable fashion that also coincidentally does very good things for his musculature. “How are you feeling on this fine Monday?”
“Have you ever left a piece of laundry on the line through a change of season?” Will asks, presumably rhetorically, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. “You wait and wait for the calendar to come back around, and the summer after, the trees might look the same, but try as you might you'll never recognize that shirt.”
From anyone else, Raylan would take this as a declaration of a hangover of truly objectionable proportions, but Will is just sort of like that. “My aunt Helen would have whupped my ass had I neglected one of her frocks that way,” he says, dropping his arms to his sides and letting his head thump back onto the pillow, hopes of being admired in vain. “Not feeling round three?”
“That was work,” Will says, stumbling out of bed and into the bathroom quick enough that Raylan barely has a chance to ogle him. “There’s been a murder.”
“Always is,” Raylan calls over the sound of the shower starting up. “If D.C.’s calling you, I’m assuming it was freaky.”
“Always is,” Will calls back. “Forty-ish-year-old Caucasian male, body mounted on a stag’s head in some old hunting lodge, kidneys, liver missing. The usual song and dance.” He sounds bitter about it.
“Just like your guy from the presentation, what was it, the St. Louis Cardinal?” Raylan asks. He had attended all of Will’s presentation, and even listened to the interesting parts. Will wasn’t the best about eye contact and audience participation, and Raylan had never gotten much from Behavioral Science, given that in his experience most people just behave like idiots and there isn’t any accounting for it, but the photos had been grisly.
“The Minnesota Shrike.” The shower curtain rattles, and Raylan wonders if the neighbors can hear everything they’re saying. Back when he was living in the motel, Raylan had recovered no fewer than two fugitives based on information he overheard through his own wall. “But we caught him, so it’s probably his copycat, or his copycat’s copycat, or God knows what other hellish level of abstraction.”
“Is it the level of abstraction where you need me to give you a ride to the airport?”
“Actually,” Will says, and then Raylan’s phone rings.
“Hold up a second,” Raylan says, and then, “Hey, Art. Are you calling to bestow an additional punishment on me at”—he checks the clock—“six on a Monday morning?”
“A punishment? No, Raylan, I’m calling with an opportunity to serve the good people of the Eastern District of Kentucky.”
“A mandatory opportunity?”
“Is there another kind I’m not aware of?”
“A missed one,” Raylan says, definitely not thinking of Will in the shower while on the phone with Art.
“That’s the spirit,” Art tells him. “Anyway, your own little ancestral hotbed of crime and delinquency’s had another thing go all strange and jurisdiction-y, and long story short they’re bringing in a consultant from the FBI. Guy by the name of Will Graham, you heard of him?”
Will drops what sounds like all of the hygiene products in existence onto the floor of the shower. “You know, I think I went to his talk this weekend,” Raylan tells Art. “Something about sociopathic behavior.”
“Don’t you start any shit with him about psychology,” Art warns. “The way the guys at the FBI talk about him, he’s one of those delicate geniuses. Fragile-like. If he’s broken by the time he gets to Kentucky, you gotta pay for a replacement.”
“I’m driving him to the scene?” Raylan asks. As far as extended punishments go, it’s not the worst—he doubts Will’s too picky about the radio.
“Given that the two of you are at the same conference, the federal government, in a rare example of inter-agency cooperation, has found a way to save the taxpayers the cost of his airfare.”
“Lexington first, or—”
“Straight to Harlan, sounds like his boss resents his happiness almost as much as I resent yours. Got a pen?”
“Sure,” Raylan says, rummaging for one in the drawer with the Gideon Bible, and Art gives him Will’s contact information. They hang up, and Will comes out of the bathroom a minute later, looking damper but significantly less distressed and crazy.
“Strange thing happened,” Raylan tells him. “My boss gave me your phone number.”
“I rarely carry my phone,” Will says, sounding annoyed for no good reason that Raylan can discern.
“Well, that’s because you like to upset me by reinforcing hillbilly stereotypes,” Raylan tells him, and Will sighs.
“Given that we’re all but cogs in the great machine of bureaucracy, I suppose I should be grateful for the efficiency,” he says, toweling his hair. “Harlan near you?”
“Oh, nearer’n you might think,” Raylan says. “Can you be ready to leave in ten?”
***
It’s four and a half hours from Nashville to Harlan, four at fuck-you-I’m-the-law speeds, four-forty-five given that Will keeps needing to piss. Other than that, he’s not the worst company Raylan’s ever had on a road trip, not that that’s saying much. Raylan had picked him out a handful years back, in the immediate aftermath of Winona, mostly on the basis that he didn’t seem the type to do much talking to anyone, and a little bit because Raylan could pull out just a hint of an accent if he leaned hard enough into his own and talked about shit like fishing. Raylan doesn’t do conferences much, but it’s worked out intermittently fine since then, which is some kind of remarkable all by itself.
“So,” Raylan says, most of the way into the drive. “Got any pets?”
“I have seven dogs,” Will says, resting his forehead against the window of the town car to watch the miles of green nothing blur by. “The newest one’s name is Winston.”
“Huh,” says Raylan, and that’s about it for conversation.
Almost before they come to a full and complete stop, Will is out the door, beelining towards some guy Raylan doesn’t recognize. He’s got a face like a skull and looks like he was aiming to dress down, but missed. There’s a collared shirt under the sweater under his jacket, and the overall effect is like when those old pre-war houses get done up in eggshell and taupe by a Gary-type realtor for the sake of palatability. The two of them have a short conversation that looks sharp on Will’s end and tranquil on the other guy’s, and it ends with the guy placing a paternalistic hand on Will’s shoulder and Will leading him back to the car like a dog on a leash.
“Raylan,” Will says, as Raylan swings the driver’s side door shut and settles his hat into place. “I’d like you to meet Dr. Hannibal Lecter. My psychiatrist.”
“A pleasure to meet you,” says Dr. Hannibal Lecter, letting go of Will to shake Raylan’s hand. His hands are more working-man than Raylan would have guessed from the soft job and shiny shoes, but the man is without a doubt the manicure type.
“Your psychiatrist,” Raylan says, sliding Will an amused glance. The Marshals have tried that particular racket on him enough times that he has the applicable escape routes posted on the backs of his eyelids. “Couldn’t get out of it?”
“More like I couldn’t get it out of me,” Will says, bitter again.
“I prefer to think of my therapy as not something to get out of, but something to be taken in,” Dr. Lecter says. His voice isn’t from anywhere Raylan’s ever been—it sounds like he’s holding something carefully in his mouth and talking around it. “However, our relationship has never been an official one.”
Raylan has a brief moment where he thinks damn, I hope Will isn’t fucking his psychiatrist, given that there’s no way Dr. Hannibal Lecter doesn’t walk at least a little bit crooked, before he remembers that it’s none of his business and he does not care. “Nothing wrong with taking things a little ways off the books,” he says. “Some things, at least. Any word on when they’re planning to open up the scene?”
“Hannibal and the rest of the team flew into Blountville, so they beat us by a couple of hours,” Will says, pushing his glasses up his nose in a way that makes Raylan want to shove him into a locker, just to get him to cut that shit out. “Should be finished up soon.”
“Unfortunately, we are having some difficulty convincing the sheriff to give our Will the room he needs to work,” Dr. Lecter says. His hand has migrated casually to the center of Will’s back. Raylan cannot imagine letting a man touch him like that in public. “Napier, I believe is the name is—I have his card, if you would be so kind as to give him a call and speed the process along?”
“Oh, no need, Sheriff Napier and I are old pals,” Raylan says cheerfully, punching in *67. Tillman is smart enough to ignore Raylan’s calls, but not smart enough to screen unknown numbers. “Hey there, Sheriff, it’s Raylan Givens,” he says when the man picks up, quirking a grin at the resulting string of profanities. “I am just so pleased to chat with you as well. Listen, I hear you’re giving my FBI consultant trouble in terms of the access to the crime scene he needs to do his job.” The lightest possible emphasis on my. Just for fun, mostly.
“I get one kid who’s too bright-eyed and industrious not to call the tipline just because he’s seen something that looks a little bit like something he saw on the internet news, and suddenly my woods are swarming with all sorts,” Tillman bitches. “I am sick and tired of you federals coming in here and trying to push me—”
“Who is ‘you federals’?” Raylan interrupts, amused. “We went to the same goddamn high school, Tillman, I got my name on a banner in the gym somewhere to prove it.” It’s a low blow—Tillman never was much of an athlete himself. “Now, from what I hear, someone’s taken a dead body and mounted it up like a teenager’s first run at taxidermy. Why would it be in the interests of your department to have the slightest thing to do with that?”
There’s a short silence on the other end of the line. Tillman never was much in it for the purposes of solving crime. “Let the FBI’s guy do his magic trick and call you an invaluable partner in his report, Tillman, it’s that simple,” Raylan concludes.
“Fine,” Tillman concedes, shifting around a bit. From the sound of it, he didn’t so much as bother getting out of bed for the freaky murder. “When you’re back here in a couple of days annoying the piss out of the citizenry, do not call me,” he says, and hangs up.
Raylan flips his own phone shut with a flourish and cups his hands around his mouth to holler, “Okay, boys, fun’s over. Boss says it’s time to go.” The cops who’ve been loitering around the murder cabin trying to peer through the windows shuffle out, and Raylan slaps a couple of the ones he knows to be real assholes on the shoulder with a “go bother some drunk teenagers for me.”
Once the local boys have pulled out, all that’s left is the big shiny van and some caution tape hanging limply from the trees. Raylan gestures towards the cabin with a flourish. Will does not look adequately impressed, but he does amble off in that direction, and a couple of minutes later the FBI team (including one hot chick) wanders out, stripping off gloves and talking animatedly amongst themselves.
Will’s magic trick turns out to take a while. “Sometimes he has to get in the mood. It’s fugacious, per him,” hot chick Beverley explains, which Raylan knows to be true in more ways than one. As a result, he suffers fifteen minutes of polite conversation, during which he has to turn down Dr. Lecter’s request for his business card on account of not having one, before he hears a truck coming down the drive and goes to stand at the curve in the road just before all the hubbub becomes visible, thumbs hooked into his belt by his gun and his badge, real friendly-like.
Somehow, he’s not surprised to see Boyd Crowder pull up.
Boyd turns the truck off and steps out, looking for all the world delighted to see him. “Howdy, Boyd,” Raylan drawls.
“Raylan Givens,” Boyd says, relishing it in that way of his. “Now, what ill-founded and thus unconstitutional form of police harassment lies in wait for me this morning?”
“What are you doing here, Boyd.”
“I am using a license issued to me by the state of Kentucky to drive a vehicle registered in my name on roads that are a part of private land to which I hold the deed,” Boyd says, not answering the question. “So I might very well ask what you are doing here.”
“I know all the old Crowder holdings, and this ain’t one of ‘em,” Raylan shoots back. It’s annoying as all get-out when Boyd plays him for a big-city idiot. “Furthermore, it’s an active crime, so I ask you again: what are you doing here?”
“Crime scene,” Boyd says, faux-breathy, but maybe a little nervous. “Well, in that case, I was merely checking to see whether an old friend had stopped by. And look, one had.”
“Why don’t you come sit with the nice gentlemen from the FBI until we see whether there’s anything for us to chat about as old friends?” Raylan suggests, not suggesting.
“The FBI,” Boyd says. “Don’t mind if I do. I bet you they have stories.” And then the strangest thing happens—Boyd follows Raylan down the drive, docile as a kitten, and sits himself down on the hood of the town car, watching the cabin like you would a predator. Raylan leans up beside him, and together, they wait to see what’s inside.